Discovering the Value of Influencer Marketing

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the increasingly digital landscape is changing the way we market. Window shopping and outbound advertising tactics have become a thing of the past as more and more customers use digital media to access information and influence the way they make decisions. This is why it’s important to discover the value of influencer marketing on social media to guide your audience.

What is an Influencer and How Does Influencer Marketing Work?

Influencers are people who are highly active on social media and blogs. They are brand advocates and niche promoters. Most influencers have thousands if not millions of followers. Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using these types of highly active individuals to drive your brand’s message or product to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of prospects or customers through channels like email, you instead network, inspire, hire, or pay influencers within your niche to get the word out for you.

The Value of Influencers to Guide Your Audience

Consumers trust recommendations from a third party more often than a brand itself. To get a better understanding, think of this in a more personal context. You don’t usually trust someone who approaches you at the grocery store and starts bragging about himself or herself and telling you why you should be his or her friend. But, if a mutual friend where to vouch for this person, you would be much more inclined to believe that a friendship is possible. Think of the influencer as the mutual friend connecting your brand with your consumers.

When you connect with an influencer and start campaigns together not only do you get to reach their audience, you get to reach their audience’s network as well. Because there are strong loyalties between the influencer’s audience and in turn the audience’s network, an influencer has the ability to drive traffic to your site, increase exposure, and flat out boost sales through their recommendations or stories.

Another study by Burst Media looked at 48 influencer marketing programs, spanning 15 industries, and 662 social publishers and bloggers. They also found some astonishing results. Their study demonstrated a 6-to-1 ROI. So what’s working well? Many of the marketing campaigns that were part of the study included influencer sponsored blogs, influencer-driven content, and a strong social cadence.

Kickstart Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

Are you ready to start with influencer marketing? Here are 5 basic steps you can take to begin your campaign. Hint, it’s all about reach, relevance, and resonance.

Step 1: Define your audience. Just like any marketing strategy, it is important to know your audience and start to understand who impacts their decisions before buying a product or service.

Step 2: Discover the right influencers. Make sure you find people who can produce and share content that will actually impact your business or your customer’s decisions. Having a large following is great, but make sure there is value behind a specific influencer’s following.

Step 3: Monitor influencers for open opportunities. Tap in and start to understand what your influencers are talking about, asking about, and more importantly look at how their audience interacts with them.

Step 4: Take action and start engaging. Start building your relationship with influencers by following, sharing, linking to, and commenting on their social channels. You can even cut to the chase with a personal message to start building a relationship.

Step 5: Measure your results. Be sure you have the proper infrastructure setup to keep track of your effectiveness. It is important to note if your online relationships with influencers are translating into tangible events and conversions.

Have you ran successful influencer marketing campaigns in the past? Let us know how you tapped into this rapidly growing marketing tactic by commenting below.

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